It's gadget season again

The Verge's David Pierce, Alex Cranz, and Richard Lawler discuss all the gadgets announced at IFA 2023, the next flagship phone events from Apple and Google, and a whole lot more. Also: Nilay Patel breaks news about the 5G banana surgery. Further reading: No, they did not do surgery on a banana over 5G Apple’s September iPhone event: how to watch and what to expect Google leaked Google’s flagship Pixel 8 Pro, again Google sets its Pixel 8 launch event for October 4th Google kills Pixel Pass without ever upgrading subscriber’s phones Taylor Swift Eras Tour is coming to theaters this October Starfield review: a stellar sci-fi refresh of the Bethesda RPG formula Sony is raising PlayStation Plus prices up to $40 per year Dolby might have found a way to make built-in TV speakers sound much better Instagram may be making Reels longer to compete with TikTok Google’s Duet AI now available in Docs, Gmail, and other Workspace apps IFA 2023: the biggest announcements from Europe’s big tech show Alexa and Google Assistant play together nicely, but not perfectly, on JBL’s new speakers Anker's new MagGo wireless chargers might charge iPhones just as fast as MagSafe Philips Hue has three new smart security cameras Jlab’s $39.99 Jbuds Mini are the smallest yet. How Google made the world go viral We sent the top ANC headphones to a lab to test their noise-canceling abilities This USB button helps Jeopardy! contestants get their buzz on The future of Tesla is in China Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Speaker 00

  College football is back. So Hilton called to me, the superstition concierge, to make your fan rituals a reality. Need a room to match your lucky number? We got you. Want to make sure our team doesn't wash your lucky jersey? Oh, that smells lucky. Hilton's unmatched hospitality can keep up with any superstition, even a marching band wake-up call at 5:55 and 55 seconds. Hit it! When you need a team that will do whatever it takes on game day, it matters where you stay. Hilton, for the stay.

• 0:31Speaker 01

  When you need to build up your team to handle the growing chaos at work, use Indeed sponsored jobs. It gives your job post the boost it needs to be seen and helps reach people with the right skills, certifications, and more. Spend less time searching and more time actually interviewing candidates who check all your boxes. Listeners of this show will get a $75 sponsored job credit at indeed.com/podcast. That's indeed.com/podcast. Terms and conditions apply. Need a hiring hero? This is a job for Indeed sponsored jobs.

• 1:00Nilay Patel?

  Neelai, you made us promises about bananas. Are you here to deliver? I made significant promises about bananas and my fellow Americans. I'm here to say that my administration has delivered. This is your white whale. This is the only story I've ever wanted to do. And after we're done talking about it, I'm gonna leave. I'm done. I'm gonna start a cafe, which has always been a lifelong dream. No, a couple of weeks ago, I asked Vergecast listeners on this show that if they had actually experienced the real world benefits of 5G, to send us a note, because the carriers themselves have not experienced the real world money that they thought they would make from 5G.

• 1:40Nilay Patel?

  Tons of people sent me a video of a banana in a DaVinci robot, which is a robot surgery tool, and the banana is getting a raisin pulled out of it, and then the banana is getting stitched back up. This video was like very popular.

• 1:54Alex Cranz?

  I think I sent it to you.

• 1:57Nilay Patel?

  Like, it's just around. It's just a me. It's been, it's been floating around for like a couple of years, apparently, with this text on it that says, "The surgeon was in London and the banana was in California, and this proves 5G."

• 2:09Alex Cranz?

  Well, there's like no provenance for the video, or at least like the version I saw, it was just like, here's a banana, it's 5G. And I was like, who are you, random TikTok man? Where did this video come from?

• 2:18Nilay Patel?

  Well, and just, just to be the one who says this out loud, who cares?

• 2:23David Pierce?

  I think one really good reason to not check on this is that is who cares? But but this is why The Verge exists, because we do.

• 2:30Nilay Patel?

  Well, unfortunately, this is my calling. It's this and a cafe. So there are versions of this video on X that have like 15 million views. And once that happens, people just were posting it, posting it, posting it. So I promised Verge listeners that I would blow this story open. And I'm here to tell you that I did. And if you are on the Pulitzer Committee, I'm available in person. I'll come to you. But I talked to the surgeon who operated on the banana. His name is Dr. Kaiserona. He's located in Southern California. Let's listen to Kaiser.

• 3:04Speaker 05

  I did surgery on this banana, but it wasn't over 5G.

• 3:07Nilay Patel?

  There it is.

• 3:07David Pierce?

  Done and done.

• 3:09Nilay Patel?

  We don't, do you need anymore?

• 3:10David Pierce?

  How did you find this person?

• 3:12Nilay Patel?

  So people are lazy. Like, the whole story of this is media and the internet is super lazy and in search of views. So if you just start clicking and looking at variations of the video, they all have like fake credits. And so I just started chasing all the credits. And one of them was Dr. Rona's Instagram handle, but it wasn't linked. It was on Twitter, it's just plain text, which is an incredible piece of evidence, right? It's like this thing has been booted and pirated and copied so many times that the credit has been survived, but it actually hasn't translated between platforms. It jumped platforms. So I had to take the credit from X and then go search all the other platforms. And you find Dr. Kaiserona, and on his Instagram page, there's this video.

• 3:56Nilay Patel?

  And he's in the comments of the video, replying to people who are like, what an amazing demonstration of 5G technology. And he's like, this wasn't, I don't know where this came from. I don't know where this idea came from. So I sent him a message on Instagram. I wrote him an email. I called his office, like, very politely, like, over several times over the course of a few days. It got to the point where the woman who answered the phone, I was like, hey, it's Neelai Patel. And she literally, I heard her turn to the person next to her and say, it's about the banana video again.

• 4:25David Pierce?

  So is this because lots of people call about the banana video? Or because you had become so relentless about the banana video?

• 4:32Nilay Patel?

  Good reporting is about persistence. It is because I had called them so many times about the banana video. Is, is Dr. Rona like a well-known fruit surgeon? Like what? No, so I, I finally, he called me. He was, I believe at the airport. He was on his way to Italy on vacation. Fruit surgery pays well, from, from what I hear. It's, it's lucrative. But he called me, he had some time, and he was just cracking up.

• 4:53Speaker 05

  When I first saw that, I saw someone post my video and say it's some surgeon in New York performing, performing an operation on some, someone in London. And I was like, wait, what is this? So I commented, I was like, this is not true. You know, this is my video. So it's, so yeah, it's false. I was, it was done in Los Angeles. I mean, uh, the procedure was done in the, uh, Los Angeles. The banana was in Los Angeles.

• 5:14Nilay Patel?

  The banana was in Los Angeles. I'm just telling you right now, I blew this story wide open. Call Dr. Pulitzer right now. Get him on the phone. The banana was in Los Angeles, sir. So this just keeps happening to him. So we post the story, the story, you know, itself has now has a life of its own. A lot of people in our comments are like, I can't believe they did surgery and a banana over 5G just to troll me, which is great. The point that I'm trying to make with this is one, we were primed to believe lies about 5G by the 5G hype industrial complex, right? All of the carriers around the world insisted that 5G was a race. Really, all that we've gotten out of it is higher network capacity in crowded areas. Like that is more or less the shape of the 5G experience for most people.

• 5:59Alex Cranz?

  We got one more thing. We got misinformation about fruit surgery.

• 6:02Nilay Patel?

  Well, so that because of all these promises, someone, who knows who, was able to take this pretty familiar video of a Da Vinci robot doing its thing. Another video of the robot doing surgery on a grape went viral all by itself with no 5G claims.

• 6:18Alex Cranz?

  No 5G, right.

• 6:18Nilay Patel?

  So they just took a banana video. They changed it a little bit to make it different than the grape. And then that went viral on its own. And I'm telling you, that's because we were primed to believe these lies about 5G. The second piece is that no one asked. Even the video that I found that had the credit on it, like all you had to do is chase that credit from X to Instagram and find the surgeon saying. Saying, no, this wasn't over 5G. No one did that work. We haven't fixed that problem at all. And this is nothing. The stakes of the banana getting the surgery over 5G are zero. But just think about how much other information like this that we are constantly exposed to that no one is checking.

• 6:56David Pierce?

  And next time, just ask yourself, anytime you encounter something on the internet, just ask, is the banana in Los Angeles?

• 7:02Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, the banana is usually in Los Angeles.

• 7:04David Pierce?

  The banana is usually in Los Angeles.

• 7:07Speaker 05

  I'm like turning into like the banana specialist, you know, it's like the fans make fun of me because I'm like, oh, you just operate on fruit all day. That's all you do. And that was just during COVID.

• 7:17Nilay Patel?

  Dr. Rona was great. He was a great sport about it. So thank you to Dr. Kaiser Rona for engaging in this silly story about the banana, especially for calling me on vacation. That was very nice of him. He said, smart dimensions, weight loss in Southern California. If you're in the market for robot surgery. You know, the banana survived. This is my contribution to the Vergecast this week. I'm out of here. David, take it away.

• 7:49David Pierce?

  Welcome to the Vergecast, the flagship podcast of Techtember and Techtober and Techvember and Techsember and all of the other months to come. It's about to get wild in the tech world, y'all, and we're going to be here for all of it. Alex Cranz is still here. Hi, Alex. Hi. What about Tully? Tully? No, if we have Tully, we're never going to make it to Techtember. Don't do this to me. Richard Lawler is here. Hi, Richard. Hello. I just want you to know that both I and everyone who listens to the Vergecast prefers you to Neely. So I would just say this is an enormous upgrade over what we had just before the break. I get that a lot.

• 8:24David Pierce?

  What's your take on bananas? How many times have you done surgery on a banana? I guarantee no banana takes. You don't have any takes on bananas? Now I feel obligated to press on this theory. You don't have any takes on bananas?

• 8:35Speaker 06

  Riley's Banana Shakes, yes. Bananas, no.

• 8:38Alex Cranz?

  That's good.

• 8:38David Pierce?

  Fair enough. So, we have a lot to cover. This is like the last week of summer. It's about to truly get bonkers in the tech world. Like, we have this big run of events about to happen. So this was kind of a mix of leaks and information about what's coming this fall, plus the last of this like grab bag of news we've been talking about all summer. Like, get all your stuff out before Apple announces the iPhone event, because basically as soon as that happens, like, it is the fall and chaos reigns forever. But the first thing I want to do is talk about some of the stuff that's coming this fall. And before we were coming into this, I made a list of all of the events of like the next six weeks. And can I just read them to you? And I need you all to feel the feelings that it made me feel to write this list down. Are you guys ready?

• 9:23Alex Cranz?

  Do I need like a drink first?

• 9:24David Pierce?

  You're gonna need several drinks during and after. Take a shot for every time you're gonna have to work too much in the next six weeks.

• 9:30Speaker 06

  Don't, you'll die.

• 9:32David Pierce?

  Okay, here's what we have. Itha is happening right now. The Toronto International Film Festival, which is a surprisingly cool source of movies, especially like smaller stuff you might not have heard of, starts September 7th. The Apple event where we're gonna see the iPhone 15 is on September 12th. The Detroit Auto Show is on September 13th. Amazon is having an event, presumably one of those where they just launched 200 things that run Alexa, on September 20th. The next day, on the 21st, Microsoft is having an event, probably some surfaces. The Code Conference, which we're obviously a huge part of, starts on September 26th. Meta Connect is on September 27th. We're gonna see the Quest 3. There's a Google event. We're probably gonna see the Pixel 8 on October 4th. And then the next day, on October 5th, is Samsung's Developer Conference,

• 10:15David Pierce?

  where I assume they'll just like talk about Bixby a bunch. And that's just between now and the first week of October. So like for all the people who write to the Vergecast email and are like, "Hey, can you talk more about gadgets?" Like, oh boy, it's coming. It's coming, y'all. We missed the gadgets too, and they're about to come back with a true vengeance. Are we like, is this good? Are we excited about this?

• 10:39Alex Cranz?

  I'm always excited about this time of year because I like all the travel. I like the hustle and bustle. I like how you're just moving. And then like Thanksgiving comes and you're like, there's just an off switch. And you just stop functioning for a week ideally. And that's really, really nice. Like, and you just get all these cool things to play with for a month and a half. And that's fun. I like that. I like playing with all the stuff. I wish there were more like things that I really enjoy, like not phones, but I'm still excited. Like I want e-readers and weird tablets.

• 11:10David Pierce?

  Yeah, real lack of COBO events this fall for Cranz.

• 11:13Alex Cranz?

  Yes, where are the COBO events? Okay, where's the NOOK event? Like, I want a Samsung event, but I just want it to be TVs and speakers. That's it.

• 11:23David Pierce?

  I'm imagining a NOOK launch is just like one person at a Barnes and Noble who like spots the new NOOK on her shelf. And it's like, oh, look, a new NOOK. And then the CEO just bursts out from a display of books. And it's like, we made it for you.

• 11:35Alex Cranz?

  With like some music playing, like the lights start changing.

• 11:39David Pierce?

  Exactly.

• 11:39Alex Cranz?

  But they're like, if you want to get to some snacks, they're right in the back.

• 11:42David Pierce?

  At this, at the knockoff Starbucks that we put back there in every one of our stores.

• 11:48David Pierce?

  I don't know, Richard, how do you feel about this?

• 11:49Speaker 06

  Well, and I love that. And I love the events, the pace of it. Not so much the travel, covering them from at home, much better. But also it's the time when all of that stuff that came out at CES and that was announced really early in the year, then you never heard about it again. And companies acted like they never announced it at all. When you ask them, they're like, like, what's that? I don't, I would remember if you, if you, if we'd said that, but I don't. Now it's coming out like Samsung's like, oh yeah, remember we launched 200 gaming monitors? And we said they were going to be released. Now, now you can actually buy them, maybe. They might be at your local Best Buy. So there's kind of both parts. You have these announcements of products that are about to come out and will be out very soon. And you also have these things that you've been waiting for so long that you probably forgot about them. But here they are.

• 12:30Alex Cranz?

  And they're all monitors from Samsung.

• 12:32David Pierce?

  That's true. The thing that precedes all of this actually is like back to school season, which we've been in the throes of for like three weeks now. And that's when everybody who's like selling large TVs and large computer monitors and like wants to sell you a thing with gaming lights on it, like back to school season is their sweet spot. So we've, we've been in this like, remember that thing you heard about at CES space for the last few weeks? And I agree, it's been delightful. Samsung being like, remember that big screen we told you about? Look at it. Here it is. I love it. I'm in on that.

• 13:01Alex Cranz?

  You put it outside, it's great, it's bright.

• 13:03David Pierce?

  Exactly. Um, okay, so we're gonna have plenty of time over the next six weeks to cover all of this stuff. So we're just gonna like lightning round it for now. We pulled out a bunch of stuff that's happening this fall. Let's, we each picked one and we're just gonna talk about it for a little bit here now, just kinda what's on our mind as a little preview as we go into the fall. Uh, Richard, what'd you pick?

• 13:23Speaker 06

  The Pixel 8, first of all, Google just can't stop leaking its own phones. The Pixel 8 Pro showed up on Google's store website a little bit early. Fortunately, we didn't have to wonder whether or not it was the Pixel 8 Pro or not, because it had some alt text that very clearly described it as the Pixel 8 Pro.

• 13:39David Pierce?

  This is definitely deliberate, right?

• 13:41Speaker 06

  And the guy in the picture is also probably wearing a new Pixel Watch, if you take a look closely.

• 13:45Alex Cranz?

  It has to be deliberate. They did the alt text, like, you don't mess that up.

• 13:49Speaker 06

  It might be, but they also have a track record of doing this that's so long that they might just be that incompetent. They, it's the perfect crime.

• 13:57Alex Cranz?

  What if that's actually not incompetence? What if that's the plan? Like, it's always been the plan, so everybody's like, oh, man, they're always leak. What's it gonna be this time? I'll get excited this time. I don't think it's a good plan, but like, I think it could be the plan.

• 14:10David Pierce?

  Was it last year with the Pixel 7 that Google ended up just tweeting out, like, yeah, here it is? Like, weeks ahead of the launch, they were just like, yeah, you've seen it enough times, here it is, enjoy. I think that was last year.

• 14:21Speaker 06

  I can't, I can't remember if that was the 7 or the 78, but I think you're right, that was the 7. They were just like, yeah, look, you know what it is.

• 14:28David Pierce?

  It looks like the last one, whatever.

• 14:31Speaker 06

  Um, the, the bad news unfortunately this week about the Pixel is, you know, if you bought a Pixel 6 and you subscribed to Pixel Pass, like I did, thinking that you'd be able to easily upgrade, because Google said you would be able to. They said you would. You won't. You couldn't upgrade for two years, it was locked. You would have to wait two years to upgrade to a new device. It is now one year and about 10 and a half months, and Google says, yeah, we're not doing that anymore. The Pixel Pass is over.

• 14:56Alex Cranz?

  Do you feel bait and switched?

• 14:58Speaker 06

  I feel bait and something. I don't know switched exactly.

• 15:01Alex Cranz?

  Yeah, cause before this, like, before we started recording, you were like, I'm not that upset about it. But you're like, walk me through that. Why aren't you that upset about it?

• 15:09Speaker 06

  Well, there's kind of two parts to it. What people paid for, what I paid for, I got. I bought a phone.

• 15:15Alex Cranz?

  Okay.

• 15:16Speaker 06

  That I paid for over the course of several months. Also paid a kind of bundled discounted price for a bunch of services like cloud storage that I don't really use. YouTube Music that I do use, a YouTube Premium. It's pretty nice to forget that YouTube has ads. Got all that. And even after the Pixel Pass goes away, they'll still have a discounted rate for those services. And also insurance for the phone and stuff like that. Like, it was all in one thing. Sweet. But when they announced it, they said that it was going to give you easy device upgrades. And you could do it after two years. And now, no one will get that. Like, it's not even like they're cutting it off and some people took advantage, some people didn't. Zero. There is zero of that. Which, you can still get like a 0% APR phone if you want to get it like and pay it over the course of months or something.

• 16:01Speaker 06

  But you just can't do this package again.

• 16:03David Pierce?

  I think you're way underselling this. I think this is outrageous. Like, I honestly believe this is one of the like crueler and more cynical things Google has done in a series of cruel and cynical things to people who bought its products and cared about them. And they framed this in the course of building up the Pixel over the years as like another way to believe that Google is going to continue to care about its hardware, right? Like, it has said over and over for years now, like, we are in this for real. We are going to take care of customers. We're going to keep giving you reasons to be part of this. We're going to keep making the deals better, on and on and on. And this is like the most deliberate shitty rug pull of a move I can imagine. Even if everyone more or less, like you're saying, comes out of it whole.

• 16:46David Pierce?

  Which I actually don't really think is true because I think there are a lot of people who are now going to go through much more messy and complicated upgrade programs than it would have been if I could have just clicked a button and shipped my thing to Google and gotten a new phone. Like, that's a win in a way that like even if I have to go to my carrier store and do a trade-in, it's more complicated. So even just making it harder is a loss. But I just think, like, from a pure, like, showing people you don't care about them move, this is such a crappy thing for Google to do.

• 17:13Speaker 06

  And the people who are the most dedicated to the brand, like, probably the biggest Pixel fans who were like, "Okay, yeah, I'll get one and then two years from now, I'll get another one. I'm willing to sign up. Let me do it."

• 17:23Alex Cranz?

  I think it's a mischaracterization to call you guys the biggest Pixel fans. I think just Pixel fans, right?

• 17:30Speaker 06

  Who's a bigger Pixel fan?

• 17:31Alex Cranz?

  No, but like

• 17:32Speaker 06

  I'll fight them.

• 17:33Alex Cranz?

  Are there people that is there anything above a pixel fan? I think like being a pixel fan in itself makes you a big pixel fan.

• 17:40David Pierce?

  So you're saying like there is no such thing as a small pixel fan?

• 17:43Speaker 06

  There's not like a Zune tattoo guy of the pixel community.

• 17:46Alex Cranz?

  Yeah, there's no such thing as a small pixel fan. Like you have to have passion.

• 17:49David Pierce?

  There are no small pixel fans, only small people.

• 17:51Alex Cranz?

  Like there's like E Ink. There's no such thing as a small E Ink fan. Like you can't be like, oh, that's a like, I'm not a big E Ink fan. I'm an E Ink fan because there's not a lot of us. There's not enough of us for there to be like big ones and little ones.

• 18:05Speaker 06

  No, you know what? I think there are kind of a pixel casuals.

• 18:08Alex Cranz?

  Okay.

• 18:09Speaker 06

  As it were. And and many of them may have picked up the pixel pass because again, it was it was a pretty good deal. And a decent way to buy a phone. It was like, oh, you know, you can click a button and you can get all the things in one thing. Not your carrier, you can go bring that how you want, or you could get Google Fi and get another $5 off. But now those people are just, oh, not happening.

• 18:26Alex Cranz?

  I think it's just like was just super, I don't know. I am, I'm, I know you're processing it. And I know you're in a place where you're like, it's fine, it's chill. But I really hope like next week. We come back and we're like, Richard, how are you feeling about it? I hope you're like mad because I'm so mad on your behalf. I'm just like they like, I'm with David. I'm like they they bait and switched y'all. They were like, hey, come and do this. No, psych, we don't give a crap about you guys. We're not even going to last two years. Like, it feels like disingenuous marketing. It just feels gross. And I'm sad for you.

• 18:59Speaker 06

  Yeah, but believing that Google would actually come through on something that they promised is basically doing it to yourself. That's.

• 19:07Speaker 06

  Like I I've got to take the L on that one. I just that should have should have seen that coming. That was that was not a $5,000 IQ play.

• 19:14David Pierce?

  It really, it really is like terrifying how true that is. Like I I wrote, I wrote a thing, I think it was last week about Google Keep, their note taking app. Which has gotten a couple of like really nice upgrades. It's a good app. It's kind of a thing people don't like know or use. But the people who do really love it because it's a really good, simple note taking app. And like overwhelmingly, the comments on the story were like, don't talk about keep. Google will remember it exists and kill it. Like if an if a Google executive reads this, the one engineer who. Is still building features will get fired and they'll kill this app. And it's like, that's how people think about this stuff. Like, we literally cannot have nice things from Google anymore because it just ruthlessly kills all of them. And I think if I'm the hardware team, they're still in this position of people don't believe them that they're serious.

• 20:00David Pierce?

  And with with good reason and lots of evidence. And so like, if I was Google, I would have gone way out of my way to say, this thing is going to continue to exist. Where if we, even if we can't think of a way to make it worthwhile for the people who already got it, even if they've already been made whole, we're going to come up with something new. Because what we need you to do is be loyal to us and trust that we're going to be loyal to you. And instead, they're just like, never mind, you get YouTube.

• 20:22Alex Cranz?

  How do they, how can, like, I feel like I had this exact conversation two years ago with Dieter on the Vergecast. About like, when when that Pixel 6 came out, because that was the big moment where where that was, what? The fourth iteration of no, we really care about hardware now. This is the moment. And we were like, okay. And they did the Pixel Pass. And it's like, okay, they feel like they, and then they they pulled the rug again. So it's like, how do you build that trust? You keep like destroying that trust every time you get a little bit of it. You go and you like poop on it and say, oh, Pixel fans, the 12 of you that exist, including Richard? Get out of here. We don't like you. I just don't see how they can, they come back from this.

• 21:03Speaker 06

  Well, I think the, I think the writing really was on the wall. Because when you look at like, when the Pixel Fold came out and people asked about the Pixel Pass, they were told basically the same language that they they announced this week, that, yeah, no, um, not so much happening. And I think that's part of what makes it worse is that they could have announced this six months ago.

• 21:19David Pierce?

  Yeah.

• 21:19Speaker 06

  But people were like, oh, people were sitting back, they saw, they saw the rumors, they were like, oh, Pixel 8 is coming out. I'll, I'll just be able to get that. Check. No, no, you will not.

• 21:27Alex Cranz?

  You have felt better if they'd done it six months ago, if they just like, so you could have like, prepared emotionally?

• 21:33Speaker 06

  Emotionally, yes.

• 21:34David Pierce?

  All right, let's, let's move on. We're gonna have a lot of time to yell at Google between now and October. Do we know anything about the 8 Pro yet, by the way, Richard? Is there any, we saw the one picture in the ad. Are there like reputable rumors?

• 21:47Speaker 06

  Yes, we've seen lots of pictures. We've seen renders, we've seen specs. There's rumors that it'll have Wi-Fi 7, it'll probably still have the same. The FCC filings came out this week also. So we know that it's basically like the previous ones where like the Pro has ultra wideband, but the regular one does not. We've seen kind of hardware specs about the chips. It's a Pixel.

• 22:08David Pierce?

  Okay.

• 22:08Speaker 06

  You you know how these go. The the real question is like, what are the software features going to be? And there's been leaks of something like video unblur. So just like photo unblur, but for videos.

• 22:16David Pierce?

  That's cool. I just want to say I was out sick for the last two days and somehow Wi-Fi seven happened while I was gone for two days. So that's cool and fun. And I'll catch up on that over here. But I do think the I'm actually more interested in the Pixel than the iPhone this year because like Google has been saying this thing about like on-device AI for, you know, years now. And this seems like one of the first years that if it wants to do some like really genuinely wild on-device AI stuff, it might actually be able to. So I think that's gonna be very interesting. But again, we have lots of time to talk about that. I'm gonna go next because I want to talk about Taylor Swift and Krantz, you can go last.

• 22:50Alex Cranz?

  Okay.

• 22:51David Pierce?

  The true event of the fall, I think we can agree, is that Taylor Swift's Eras Tour is coming to AMC Theaters across the country in October. As far as I know, at least from what I've seen so far, this is all kind of just happening. We don't know for how long. We just know that they're doing at least four showings a day at every theater and that AMC has upgraded its ticket capabilities for five times as much demand as it has had before because of all the Swifties who did or did not get tickets to the Eras Tour. I honestly believe this might be like the biggest movie of all time, if it was allowed to be.

• 23:27Alex Cranz?

  It's a like concert movie, right? It's it's not live streams?

• 23:31David Pierce?

  Yeah, so from just like the little tiny bits I've seen, you can see some snippets on like Taylor Swift's TikTok account was, I think, where I saw it. It looks basically like a super well-produced concert film.

• 23:42Alex Cranz?

  I love that. That sounds great.

• 23:43David Pierce?

  It sounds amazing and you get to see it in like a gigantic theater with, you know, cool surround sound and it'll be a million Swifties. Like they even said, bring the friendship bracelets, dress in all the Eras stuff. Like you better believe I will be there giving people bracelets that say Verge Swifties and we can all be Verge Swifties together.

• 24:01Alex Cranz?

  I I won't be there, but I will support all of you. Are there Verge Swifties besides you and Neelai?

• 24:06David Pierce?

  I think sneakily like two thirds of the Verge is Swifties. I know at least a couple of people tried and failed multiple times to get Eras tickets. Richard is being suspiciously quiet, which makes me think he's definitely a Swiftie for sure.

• 24:18Alex Cranz?

  I was like, hmm, look at Richard's off looking in a corner. Richard?

• 24:22Speaker 06

  Yeah, I just don't know what's going on here. I'm very happy for you.

• 24:26David Pierce?

  The cultural event of the summer and fall and winter and the rest of our lives.

• 24:30Speaker 06

  I'm sure.

• 24:31David Pierce?

  This movie might be in theaters for a decade, Richard.

• 24:34Alex Cranz?

  She she fixed the economy like like they keep being like, oh, yeah, the the era's tour increased spending like it fixed the economy. I don't think it fixed the economy, but it increased spending. What if she like lowers the rent? What if she what if she like changes the world with this tour? I fully believe in her, her economic prowess.

• 24:53David Pierce?

  Oh, I agree. At some point, when the when the era's tour ends, we're gonna find somebody fun to talk to about this. And we're gonna go through like the insane like stratospheric records that this tour has set and nothing will ever top it ever again. And like the things she has, it's insane and wild. And I'm very excited about this movie. And that's all. Everybody, you probably can't get tickets if you're hearing this now.

• 25:18Speaker 06

  Well, it created congressional hearings about Ticketmaster.

• 25:21David Pierce?

  Oh, yeah. Well, yeah. Yeah, she broke Ticketmaster. She's gonna make AMC the most valuable company in the universe now. This is she runs the economy. This is what it is. All right, Cranz, you're up. What do you got?

• 25:30Alex Cranz?

  Okay, iPhones coming two weeks. I'm really mad. I bought an iPhone 14 Pro last year, and I was really excited about it. And I was like, I'll be fine. I don't need the next one. And now the next one sounds like it's almost definitely gonna have USB-C. And the FOMO is extreme for me at the moment. And like, I'm locked into this payment plan for another year. So it's not like, I'm not I'm cheap. I'm not gonna be going and buying it. But I'm gonna be regretting my life choices a lot. Like, come two weeks from now.

• 25:58David Pierce?

  You didn't get the iPhone upgrade plan?

• 26:00Alex Cranz?

  No, I want to pay in cash, because it didn't work with my Apple Pay card, I think. And I want I want my 3%.

• 26:07David Pierce?

  I like imagining that you just walk in with a bag of nickels and just like throw it on the desk in the Apple Store. And you're like, give me an iPhone.

• 26:13Alex Cranz?

  I just whip it across the the genius bar, Adam.

• 26:17David Pierce?

  Yeah.

• 26:17Alex Cranz?

  But it seems exciting. I don't know. iPhones are kind of weird in a weird place, right? Like, they yeah, they're in a weird place. Last year, the exciting thing was the Dynamic Island. And we enjoyed the island. But try explaining to anyone who doesn't listen to the Vergecast what the Dynamic Island is. And that's a less fun conversation.

• 26:38David Pierce?

  Yeah, they'll just say it's that thing at the top of the screen that screws up all the apps sometimes.

• 26:42Alex Cranz?

  Yeah, they're just kind of annoyed with you. But like USB-C, I'm like beyond excited about USB-C. I just got a new USB-C charger from Anchor and I'm so like it charges my phone or not my phone. It charges like my, my computer. It charges my Steam Deck. It charges just everything I own that I can plug USB-C into and it's wonderful. And I'm like, oh, I want my phone to do that, too. That seems cool. So USB-C alone has, has me pumped for it. And we're getting USB-C on the AirPod case. I'm not going to buy it because again, like if my phone doesn't do USB-C, I refuse to let my AirPods case do USB-C. It has to wait in line, but this is like exciting.

• 27:27Alex Cranz?

  If you like USB-C, it's going to be a big event. If you like anything else, it's going to be an iPhone event.

• 27:32Speaker 06

  Well, also, if you like wireless charging, I mean, we'll talk to John in a bit, but the big news at IFA is these wireless chargers that are getting announced with the Qi2 standard that the iPhone 15 may support. Well, I guess we'll find out and allow kind of non MagSafe chargers to charge iPhones at the same rate as MagSafe and also, you know, kind of other devices, other phones that support 15 watt wireless charging. So if you like wireless charging, this is your moment.

• 27:57Alex Cranz?

  I got a wireless charger, too. I spent like $150.

• 28:00Speaker 06

  Or if you want to buy a new charging stand or something like that, yeah, don't for like the next couple of months.

• 28:04Alex Cranz?

  Don't, don't be me. I bought it last month. I do not read our website enough is what happened there.

• 28:11Alex Cranz?

  A lot of regret.

• 28:12David Pierce?

  I was talking to somebody at one of the charging companies the other day and, and they were basically saying that the USB-C thing is cool, but it's a mirage because wireless is the real thing, that it's like the actual arc that we're on is wireless charging taking over. And it would have been great if USB-C had been ready, you know, 12 years ago and we could have just gone straight to that. But we didn't and that's fine. But where we're actually headed, and I think where Apple has pretty clearly been wanting to head for a long time is wireless charging. Wireless charging is mostly still very bad and not as good or fast as wired charging. So I think we still have a ways to go. But I agree. I think, I think especially some of the stuff we're seeing at IFA that we're going to talk about a little later is, is pretty exciting. Richard, do you care about this iPhone?

• 28:56David Pierce?

  Convince me to care about this iPhone.

• 28:58Alex Cranz?

  Well, I had more things to convince you about the iPhone.

• 29:00David Pierce?

  Oh, you're not done. Okay. You didn't talk about the action button yet.

• 29:02Speaker 06

  Hit me.

• 29:03Alex Cranz?

  Yeah, I was about to say, the action button? I think it's the stupidest thing in the world, and I'm not excited about the action button. I would be excited about the action button if it didn't replace the mute button. And like, if I'm just gonna have to program it to be the mute button, then it's not an action button. It's just a mute button that I had to like do an extra step to make a mute button. I want, I want both.

• 29:24David Pierce?

  I just straight up had to look at my phone to see if it still had a mute button. That thing has been on mute since the minute I took it out of the package, and I have not touched it since. Anyone who lets their phone ring loud is 75 years old. Blanket rule of the universe. If your phone rings, you are 100 years old.

• 29:42Alex Cranz?

  And shouldn't, don't you like being able to just go, oh, is it on mute? Take a quick look or like reach into your pocket and go eh, and kind of hit the little switch while you're walking down the street and be like, yeah, it's on mute. I, I just want, I want that. I like that. I don't want to have to like pull my phone out, program the mute button, and then hit mute.

• 30:00Speaker 06

  You don't miss the art of ring, of ringtones?

• 30:02Alex Cranz?

  Trying to bring ringtones back by getting rid of the mute button?

• 30:05David Pierce?

  No, maybe it's the opposite. Maybe they're killing it forever. It's like your phone can no longer make noise when it rings. Would be like truly Apple's most innovative feature in years.

• 30:15Alex Cranz?

  They have to go to my mother's house and explain that to her. Like, I'm not doing it. I'm not letting anyone at the, like, Apple, it's, Tim Cook has to fly to my mother's house and explain to her why her phone doesn't ring anymore.

• 30:27David Pierce?

  Does your mom have the ringtone that rings like an old timey phone? My mother-in-law has that ringtone, and it drives me nuts.

• 30:33Alex Cranz?

  Oh, yeah. She's got the ringtone, and she's got it on her watch, too, which she answers in the supermarket, I learned. So, sorry to all the H E B shoppers of Texas for having to listen to all of my conversations with my mom while she's picking up groceries. It's great.

• 30:49David Pierce?

  All right. Before we go to break, Alex, you wrote down one other one in the fall things coming up that you're excited about. Give us 30 seconds, then we're going.

• 30:55Alex Cranz?

  Yes. Starfield. It's the new Bethesda game.

• 30:59Alex Cranz?

  Like all other Bethesda games, I think it's gonna be stupid. But then I'm reading all the reviews and now I really wanna play it. But I also know like every other Bethesda game, I'm gonna play it for 100, 200 hours, never finish it and tell everybody it sucks. I'm so excited.

• 31:13David Pierce?

  So stupid is not the word you're looking for here.

• 31:15Alex Cranz?

  It's gonna be stupid. It's gonna be like, the characters look stupid. I feel stupid playing it because I'm like, oh, you can't look dumb. Like Bethesda characters look dumb and that's a bummer. And so far, that seems to be the case for this game as well. But also, I wanna travel around delivering coffee in space. That seems cool. I don't wanna do that in real life, but I wanna do that in space.

• 31:38David Pierce?

  Richard's just like, if it's not Overwatch, don't even talk to me.

• 31:42Speaker 06

  Yeah, I'm sorry. I want another games as a service shooter, just something I can play in 15 minute increments.

• 31:47Alex Cranz?

  You just wanna play Redfall forever. Like, that's...

• 31:50Speaker 06

  If it weren't so terrible, if it were just any slight bit less terrible, I would, I would be playing it right now.

• 31:56David Pierce?

  I like it. All right, we gotta take a break and then we're gonna come back and we're gonna talk about all the other mishmash of nonsense happening in the tech world this week. We'll be right back.

• 32:10Speaker 00

  College football is back. So Hilton called to me, the superstition concierge, to make your fan rituals a reality. Need a room to match your lucky number? We got you. Wanna make sure our team doesn't wash your lucky jersey? Oh, that smells lucky. Hilton's unmatched hospitality can keep up with any superstition, even a marching band wake up call at 5:55 and 55 seconds. Hit it! When you need a team that will do whatever it takes on game day, it matters where you stay. Hilton, for the stay.

• 32:41Speaker 01

  When you need to build up your team to handle the growing chaos at work, use Indeed sponsored jobs. It gives your job post the boost it needs to be seen and helps reach people with the right skills, certifications and more. Spend less time searching and more time actually interviewing candidates who check all your boxes. Listeners of this show will get a $75 sponsored job credit at indeed.com/podcast. That's indeed.com/podcast. Terms and conditions apply. Need a hiring hero? This is a job for Indeed sponsored jobs.

• 33:14David Pierce?

  All right, we're back. So lots of little news this week. There was some threads news. It seems like we're getting search. Sony raised the prices on PlayStation. Plus, we've got some X doing sketchy stuff. I don't really want to talk about that anymore. Wireless carriers doing weird stuff again. Call of Duty using AI to moderate voice chats, which is just America's worst idea in years. Let's, let's just blast through all this. We can't get to all of this, so let's just lightning round this again. Uh, Krantz, you're, you're still on the roll. You get to go first.

• 33:47Alex Cranz?

  I'm so excited. So Dolby just announced this thing. It's called Dolby Atmos Flex Connect. And the name is very stupid. That's okay, because what it could do could potentially be very, very cool, which is that it will automatically like just make your speakers, your wireless speakers, work with your TV, provided they both support Dolby Atmos Flex Connect. And only one of TV will support that in the next year that we know of, and it's from TCL. So it's not going to work with any of your current stuff. And it's probably not going to work with most of your stuff next year. But like five years from now, this is gonna be sick as hell. And I'm actually excited about it because like Sonos has done a lot of this stuff in the past. They do the automatic calibration and everything like that. But it's just Sonos and you have to use Sonos speakers and you're stuck in that. And this

• 34:32Alex Cranz?

  means like, okay, I can go get any speaker, like any wireless speaker I want. And it's gonna bounce, it's gonna take and ping the audio from that speaker. The TV's got its own microphones built in. It's gonna receive it and it's gonna go, oh, and fix it all. You don't have to worry about a stupid soundbar because soundbars are bad. I'm sorry. Even though I own one. You don't have to worry about like messing with anything. It should just all work. And for like the last, what, 20 years, TV audio has not just worked. So that feels appealing, even though you're still like now gonna have to buy additional speakers for your TV. At least it should make it a lot easier and more natural and

• 35:17Alex Cranz?

  hopefully cheaper than the Soto solution, which is why I'm not buying a new iPhone this year.

• 35:23David Pierce?

  So the idea seems to be, if I'm understanding this correctly, and I'm genuinely not sure that I am, but if I'm understanding this correctly, it's that you don't have to buy like a full surround sound set. You don't have to buy that one gigantic box at Best Buy. You can sort of bring your own speakers. And essentially, as long as they are compatible with this one Flex Connect spec, Dolby will be able to stitch them all together. You'll be able to put them in a system and it'll work.

• 35:53Alex Cranz?

  Yeah, that's it. Like theoretically, if Vizio supports this, you can go get those super cheap but decent Vizio speakers, set it all up. And then instead of like getting all weird and finicky and trying to use the not very good, super cheap Vizio technology to make the speakers sound good, just have Dolby do it and do it well. And it'll all sound well.

• 36:16David Pierce?

  So this seems great. This also seems like a thing that shouldn't be that hard to do and probably should have happened 15 years ago.

• 36:23Alex Cranz?

  Right. Yeah, like Sonos does it now and Sonos is wildly expensive. The TV companies have not really cared about speaker, like they haven't cared about this. They haven't needed to because they're like, okay, for them, there's three TV buyers, right? There's the people who spend all of their time in AV Forum. It's like me and Neelai. Like we're over there and when we're gonna go buy a bunch of stuff and we're gonna spend 12 years working on our system and it's gonna sound beautiful. And people will ask us how much we spent and we'll have to run from the room screaming and saying, you don't need to know that. That's us. Then there's like me a couple of years ago and a lot of people, probably most people listening to this, who are like, I want speakers that sound good.

• 37:07Alex Cranz?

  So you go and you buy some speakers. They're Sonos or Vizio or whatever. And you plug them into your TV and it sounds reasonably good. Probably not as good as any CRT TV you had 20 years ago, but decent. And then there's everybody else who doesn't listen to the Vergecast and doesn't know that all speakers in TVs suck because speakers require space and TVs don't give them any. And so they go and they buy a TV and they're like, wow, the speakers suck. So they turn the volume way up, they turn on the subtitles and they're just like, why can't I hear anything anymore? And while part of that is definitely the fault of Hollywood, so much of it is the fault of bad TV bakers not caring. And they're like, well, if you care that much, go be one of those people who buys speakers from us and puts them in the back. We don't care enough

• 37:52Alex Cranz?

  to like make it nice, but do it.

• 37:53David Pierce?

  There was this post I saw, I forget which social platform it was on, there's too many of them at this point. But there was somebody who was like, guys, you don't even know, the reason you think Netflix sounds so bad is because by default, its sound is turned to 5.1. And if you are using your built in speakers, that means you're not getting the right ones. Just go and switch it to stereo and everything will be amazing. And this post went like hugely viral and everybody was like, oh my God, you've solved it. And I was just like, my guy, like this ain't it. You didn't do it. You just had a setting wrong on your Netflix. Like, I don't know what to tell you. That is not it. And also you're going to put it on stereo and you're going to be like, oh, now it sounds bad in stereo.

• 38:32Alex Cranz?

  From two sides instead of five.

• 38:35David Pierce?

  I don't know, Richard, you're a guy who lives in AV forums and owns 30 or 40 televisions. Does this idea excite you?

• 38:41Speaker 06

  I think it sounds great from the idea that, okay, so you can just go get some speakers and press the button and it'll say, all right, I'll get, I'll get the sound figured out. And that's kind of always been the problem of Atmos is that they've programmed in the sound so it doesn't need like, okay, so how many channels do you have? Do you have two channels? Do you have 2.1? Do you have 5.1? Do you have 7.1? Do you have 9.1?

• 39:02Alex Cranz?

  8.2.

• 39:03Speaker 06

  No, I have some speakers. Do it for me.

• 39:05David Pierce?

  Yeah.

• 39:06Speaker 06

  And you'll do it. Also, they have never gotten surround sound audio right, ever at any point. It has never been seamless. It has never worked the way that it should. So I don't know why we should expect that it will.

• 39:18Alex Cranz?

  I'm an optimist at heart, Richard.

• 39:20Speaker 06

  The thing is, the technology exists, like this should be possible. This is the kind of thing that like with a microphone in the TV, with speakers with the right technology, you could do it. I'm sure that it will make Dolby money as they get licensing fees from all the speakers that are now compatible. How long it'll be until I can use this in my own living room? I'm not so sure.

• 39:38Alex Cranz?

  Well, you know, if it sucks, which it very well could, but it's a good idea. Somebody else could go like, can be like, oh, like Physio could just go and do that.

• 39:50Speaker 06

  Well, it'll be DTS, not Flex Connect.

• 39:53Alex Cranz?

  Yeah, DTS Flux Connect.

• 39:56David Pierce?

  Yeah, I just, I always think about like the, so the ultimate ears boom series are like the best Bluetooth speakers on the planet. And one of the things that they've done really well is you can actually daisy chain a bunch of them together. And it's not terribly complicated. It just like synchronizes the sound coming out of a bunch of speakers, right? So if you have a big house and you don't want to rig up a whole speaker system, you can just put four Bluetooth speakers around the house, sync them all together and it plays. And the fact that that alone is like an innovative feature in speakers is bananas. Like you can do this with Bluetooth, you can do this with Wi-Fi. Like this is not a complicated technological problem. We've done much harder things than make speakers play. And I think like to Richard's point about, you know, a million different kinds of surround

• 40:41David Pierce?

  sound, none of them that have ever been done very well. I think just the fact that it's as difficult as it is to buy like two pretty good speakers, stick them on the either side of your television and have it work is nuts. Like that's the reason I tell people to buy soundbars because you don't have to program it, you know where it goes, just don't worry about it. Even buying two speakers ends up being more work than it's worth for not that much better sound most of the time. So I think the idea that it's going to like perfectly correctly tune your room, I agree, I don't trust, but I really hope it works. Like I super, super, super hope it works because it would be awesome.

• 41:13Alex Cranz?

  Five years from now, it'll be, it'll be cheaper than Sonos and not as good, but better than nothing.

• 41:19David Pierce?

  I mean, I'll take it.

• 41:20Alex Cranz?

  Which is the entire story of home theater audio at this point.

• 41:25David Pierce?

  As is Dolby almost got it right. That's like, that's Dolby's slogan. Like, we all, we almost got it this time.

• 41:32Alex Cranz?

  No, we're not gonna, we're gonna, we're gonna write it for the last second. Screw it up. Sorry, guys.

• 41:36David Pierce?

  Yeah. Uh, Richard, what's your next one?

• 41:37Speaker 06

  Yeah, you know, my, my thing is Google's do it AI. Becoming available in docs and Gmail and other workspace apps. You know, you reported on this this week. I want to hear more from you about the people you talked to and all the things they said. But what strikes me is the price. We saw this with the Microsoft Bing AI and then making it available in Microsoft 365. And it looks like Google's going about the same, same way. They're charging, it looks like $30 per person per month.

• 42:03David Pierce?

  That's a lot of money.

• 42:04Speaker 06

  And as soon as I saw that with the Microsoft thing, and now I see it with Google. I understand why they're pushing AI so hard because they're gonna make a lot of money from it. The bad news is that the companies who buy it, they're probably gonna want to save money somewhere else. Whether or not these AI tools actually work or make people more productive or do not. They're going to be spending a lot of money on them. So there's gonna be cuts somewhere else. And it just seems like that's assured.

• 42:25Alex Cranz?

  Is it $30 per month per head?

• 42:29David Pierce?

  User.

• 42:29Alex Cranz?

  Like, per account?

• 42:30Speaker 06

  Yes.

• 42:31David Pierce?

  Yep.

• 42:32Alex Cranz?

  No.

• 42:32Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 42:34Alex Cranz?

  Nope. Hard pass. That's a no for me. It would have to be magic.

• 42:40Speaker 06

  Yeah, like, do you, can you, can you just think for a second how good it would have to be to justify that price?

• 42:44Alex Cranz?

  It would have to be magic.

• 42:46David Pierce?

  There's like a, there's a set of people who will just get this because it's useful. And there's a set of these things that I think are like time-saving in a way that will actually be meaningful to people, right? Like, the, the idea that I can, uh, I don't know, take a Google Doc and say, do it, turn this into a spreadsheet. And it'll turn it into like a remedial but functional Google Slides deck in 45 seconds. It's like, there are a lot of people to whom that is worth $30 a month. Easily. There are a lot of people who essentially do that one thing for a living. And I think the question of what happens to those people, to your point, is really interesting and really complicated and probably really messy and bad in the long run for those people.

• 43:29David Pierce?

  But I tend to agree that I think the number of people for whom there are $30 a month worth of good features in Google Duet is going to be smaller than Google thinks. And I think it's going to be the same with Copilot, that like, if you just give it to people, they'll use it because having a thing that can, you know, clean up my email grammar or make a graph out of my spreadsheet data for me is useful. And I would use that if it was just there. But paying what amounts to like 3X the price of Google Workspace for that is super, super, super steep. And I don't know that Google has made a particularly convincing case that this is going to like work. Like, we've all used Bard in the last six months.

• 44:12David Pierce?

  I don't really have any reason to believe this thing is going to be as good as they say it is.

• 44:15Alex Cranz?

  Is it gonna work with like your calendar?

• 44:18David Pierce?

  What do you mean?

• 44:19Alex Cranz?

  The only thing I would pay $30 a month for is an AI that just understood and did all my calendar scheduling for me. Like, including the polite DMs to people to be like, can I put some time on your calendar? Is this okay? All like, I want it to just do all of that. If it did all of that, I personally would pay $30. I don't know if I could get Vox Media to agree to pay $30, but like, I'd be like, oh, see you'll check. Let's do that on the side.

• 44:45David Pierce?

  There's an app called Motion. I think it's motion.io, I think, that does exactly that. And I think it's like $15 a month.

• 44:52Alex Cranz?

  But is it trustworthy?

• 44:54David Pierce?

  I haven't used it in a while, but by all accounts, it's actually pretty good. I hate those apps. Like, even as a person who is like obsessed with my calendar and spends way too much time like managing the blocks in my calendar.

• 45:04Alex Cranz?

  I can't, I can't trust them.

• 45:05David Pierce?

  No, because it's like, tell us about your flow state and we'll schedule it. And I'm like, I don't know. It like depends on what I ate for lunch that day. Like, leave me alone, calendar.

• 45:13Alex Cranz?

  I was like, no, you should just know. Like, I basically want an assistant, but it's only $30 a month. I am the problem with the economy. I am why they're all so excited.

• 45:24David Pierce?

  You're literally the reason they built Duet AI.

• 45:28David Pierce?

  Like, here's the best we can do.

• 45:29Alex Cranz?

  But I don't trust it. Like, a person, I would be like, hey, don't do that in the future. And they'd be like, yeah, pay me more than $30 a month. And I'd be like, fair, fair.

• 45:39Alex Cranz?

  Like, I just can't imagine trusting it because when it would screw up, it would probably screw up in the worst way. It would probably like decline an invite from an Apple event, which would be hysterical and be like, no, you're not going to that. Decline it and be like, you've got to go do your performance review. And I'll be like, no, those are two different things. And one matters more in this moment. Performance reviews always matter, but not on the same day as Apple.

• 46:06David Pierce?

  I don't know. I just think like my initial read of duet is very much that like, this is clear evidence that Google has not figured out what the killer app for AI is for. And it's the same with Microsoft where they've come up with a lot of relatively small, mostly useful sounding things that these tools can do without anything that you're immediately like, oh, I need that in my life. I'm also cognizant of the fact that the three of us do not have real jobs and that most jobs involve email, spreadsheets and slide decks. And most people and most companies would be willing to pay a lot of money to make any of those three things slightly more efficient.

• 46:50David Pierce?

  And like Google's bet is essentially like, okay, if we can make each one of those a little tiny bit better, we can help you write emails faster. We can help you like get more actual data out of your spreadsheet. We can help you make more beautiful decks on deadline. Like that might work.

• 47:07Alex Cranz?

  All they have to do is be like, we'll do the pivot tables and you'll never have to understand what a pivot table is. Like, a lot of places would probably be like, yeah, $30 a month. Never have to learn about a pivot table.

• 47:20David Pierce?

  Yeah. And then every just out of business school employee on planet Earth just got fired. Like, right as I was saying that sentence, they all lost their jobs.

• 47:27Alex Cranz?

  Yeah, sorry, guys.

• 47:28David Pierce?

  Yeah. If you are a like junior account executive at a marketing company, like you're so screwed. I'm so sorry.

• 47:36Speaker 06

  Fortunately, the thing that you'll that will be replacing you, our boss asked Bard, what's the coolest thing anyone could do? And received some answers.

• 47:44David Pierce?

  Can you just read the list?

• 47:45Speaker 06

  Some cool things people have done.

• 47:48Speaker 06

  Include walking to a destination, even if it's 3,000 miles away. Playing World of Warcraft for 100 hours in a week.

• 47:56Alex Cranz?

  Yes, I'm cool.

• 47:57Speaker 06

  Being in a movie with Will Smith, pretty cool, pretty cool. Cool things in the world include chewing gum, skateboards and coord outfits. I don't know. I don't know what those are. I guess I'm not cool enough.

• 48:09Alex Cranz?

  You're not cool enough.

• 48:10David Pierce?

  Don't feel bad.

• 48:11Alex Cranz?

  Who knew we were also cool for like 1995 with a chewing gum and a skateboard? We were badasses.

• 48:18David Pierce?

  You know, there's like a, there's a marketing person at like a fashion agency right now, who is furiously Googling, what is the coolest thing anyone can do? And just being like, I would not pay $30 a month for this.

• 48:31Alex Cranz?

  This is it?

• 48:32David Pierce?

  And I just, I very much enjoyed that Neelai's, when he posted that, he was like, I can't believe it didn't say a backflip, which is objectively the coolest thing.

• 48:39Alex Cranz?

  It is.

• 48:40David Pierce?

  Yeah, it's very good, but I like all of this stuff to me just says, none of this is finished yet. And it's kind of wild to see who is willing to pay for this stuff, even though it's at the very, very, very, very beginning of whatever it's gonna someday be. And who is going to say at the end of their free trial, this is neat, not worth $30 a month per person for my entire company. And if I were a betting man, I would bet on that second thing being a lot more true than either Google or Microsoft think.

• 49:12Alex Cranz?

  How long is the trial?

• 49:14David Pierce?

  I don't know.

• 49:14Alex Cranz?

  Cause like, if it's like a year long trial, maybe they have a shot. They can take the year to figure out how to make it useful. If it's a one month trial, like, yo, what are you doing? You gave, you gave Richard more time than you're giving these people. Come on.

• 49:30David Pierce?

  I think it might be 30 days. I think that is, I think that might be how long it is.

• 49:33Speaker 06

  I think their bet is that the executive who makes the decision is the person who's going to find it really useful right away. And they'll just say, yeah, we'll sign off on it and we'll fire 100 other people. Doesn't matter how well it works or it does not work. And we just saw this week of, I think Walmart announced that they're going to roll out AI for basically all their office employees. And they didn't say which one they're using or how much they're paying or anything. But I wonder how, how much, how long they'll stick with it and how many people will continue to have access to it.

• 49:57Alex Cranz?

  It's gonna be the Walmart AI. That's what it's gonna be called. And they're not gonna pay it very well. But it's gonna do the job and then the rest of us will subsidize it with our tax dollars.

• 50:08David Pierce?

  And there will be one in your town before you know it.

• 50:11Alex Cranz?

  Yeah, there'll be one in every town. It's gonna be great. It's gonna get rid of all the other little, little uh mom and pop AI stores in your town. I'm so sorry.

• 50:20David Pierce?

  The AI needs to unionize.

• 50:23David Pierce?

  Now that is gonna be when this gets really interesting.

• 50:26Alex Cranz?

  The AI labor movement for the AIs themselves.

• 50:31David Pierce?

  I don't even, yeah, we'll come back to that. Uh, my lightning round thing for this segment is I feel obligated to be the one continuing to chronicle the ever consuming normalization of all of these video apps in which they just all slowly become the exact same thing. And the version of this this week is that Instagram appears to be working on a version of Instagram reels that lets you upload videos up to 10 minutes long, which you can now do on TikTok, which TikTok did in order to be more like YouTube, where people have always been able to watch, you know, longer videos. And people on YouTube, of course, have started making shorter videos for shorts, which was created to compute with TikTok. Uh, Reels is also created to, I could do this forever. The point is, all of these apps are the goddamn same thing now.

• 51:16Alex Cranz?

  Durat though.

• 51:17David Pierce?

  Driving me nuts. And Alex, I want to get to why you're wrong very shortly here. But the last thing I want to say about this is I think 10 minute vertical videos are actually an extremely good idea. Uh, one weird thing that I have discovered is that I just really like watching vertical things. Like, there's something to this sort of flow of like how you swipe and how you watch and all that stuff. But also like, I think for a long time, there was this idea that you can't do as much in a vertical frame. And in certain ways, that's true, but also like, I don't mind. I found myself sitting, watching longer things on vertical screens than I thought. And like, I'm holding my phone the way I normally hold my phone. And so the idea that like, somebody is gonna come out and make like a show

• 51:59David Pierce?

  out of one of these 10 minutes at a time, I actually think is not crazy.

• 52:04Alex Cranz?

  You mean like, like Quibi?

• 52:06David Pierce?

  Dude, so I listened to a podcast this week. It's called The Big Flop or something like that.

• 52:13Alex Cranz?

  Oh yeah, I saw about this.

• 52:14David Pierce?

  The first episode is about Quibi and the single wildest take that I will say on this show to this week is that it, it convinced me that Quibi didn't actually miss by that much.

• 52:25Alex Cranz?

  I I would agree, honestly. I remember seeing Quibi at the time and being like, this feels like it could be a really good idea if it's executed well. And then it was just executed terribly and also released at the worst possible moment an app of that nature could have ever been released in the history of the world.

• 52:45David Pierce?

  Okay, so that's reasons two and three. Reason one is it was called Quibi. Like, that's the that's the first thing that ruined Quibi. Like, if Quibi had been called Max, it would have had a real chance, right? Like, if they hadn't spent a trillion dollars on content at the beginning. On, like, flip my murder house.

• 53:03Speaker 06

  Given some YouTubers, like, fifty bucks.

• 53:06Alex Cranz?

  The Rachel Brosnahan show, where she just, the silver arm.

• 53:10David Pierce?

  But this is what I'm saying. Bring Quibi's back as ten-minute reels, and I'm into it.

• 53:14Speaker 06

  But yeah, no, vertical video is, it's a it's a little limiting, but it also is a little bit more focused. And I think people generally do it better. It it does work. It has a place. But I kind of lean David's way, Alex. They all just become TV shows eventually.

• 53:28Alex Cranz?

  Yeah.

• 53:28Speaker 06

  And I'm a person who's never watched ten-minute videos on YouTube, so I'm not gonna watch them on Instagram. I'm not gonna watch it on TikTok. I just won't do it.

• 53:34Alex Cranz?

  Oh, I watch them on TikTok all the time, but it's the same ones I watch on YouTube, only now they're vertical. And and the dude doesn't, like, cut, like, trim it to make it vertical. So a lot of times, it's just, like, blank space, and you can hear him doing things because he's not in the frame. And I'm like, yes!

• 53:49David Pierce?

  It's just like his left hand in the frame, and that's all you can see.

• 53:52Alex Cranz?

  You see, like, just a left hand cutting something, and you're like, yeah, this is great. It's so soothing. Because I already watched it on YouTube. But I was gonna say, like, there is one big differentiator between all of these. And that is YouTube still does horizontal video, and the other ones don't.

• 54:07David Pierce?

  I mean, YouTube does.

• 54:08Speaker 06

  TikTok does do horizontal video. You can have videos that that rotate, yeah.

• 54:13Alex Cranz?

  I just, I guess, haven't been presented with them? Am I supposed to be watching this guy in horizontal all this time?

• 54:18Speaker 06

  If you upload a widescreen video on TikTok, I think it'll, like, give you the option. So like, it depends on how they upload it and what they do. But yeah, it definitely can do it.

• 54:25David Pierce?

  I have watched so many videos on TikTok that are the little horizontal video in the middle, because it's like, it's like, clipped from a YouTube video, and then just gigantic letterboxes on top. You're telling me I could have been doing it better this whole time?

• 54:37Speaker 06

  I think sometimes they'll, like, tell you, like, hey, turn your turn your phone. And it's like, yeah.

• 54:41Alex Cranz?

  This is service journalism here at The Verge.

• 54:43David Pierce?

  This is also my favorite TikTok genre is people explaining little-known features of TikTok. Like, the thing where if you put your thumb on the left side of the screen, it plays at 2x speed. Mind-blowing. Yeah. Yeah, learn how to use TikTok on TikTok. It's like the, it's, it's like the YouTubers being mad at YouTube. Like, that's what they do on TikTok. It's great. Incredible. Yeah. All right, we gotta take one more break and then we're gonna come back and we're gonna go through some of the biggest announcements coming out of IFA, the gigantic European gadget show that is happening as we speak. We'll be right back.

• 55:19Speaker 00

  College football is back. So Hilton called to me, the superstition concierge, to make your fan rituals a reality. Need a room to match your lucky number? We got you. Wanna make sure our team doesn't wash your lucky jersey? Oh, that smells lucky. Hilton's unmatched hospitality can keep up with any superstition. Even a marching band wake up call at 5:55 and 55 seconds. Hit it! When you need a team that will do whatever it takes on game day, it matters where you stay. Hilton, for the stay.

• 55:50Speaker 01

  When you need to build up your team to handle the growing chaos at work, use Indeed sponsored jobs. It gives your job post the boost it needs to be seen and helps reach people with the right skills, certifications, and more. Spend less time searching and more time actually interviewing candidates who check all your boxes. Listeners of this show will get a $75 sponsored job credit at indeed.com/podcast. That's indeed.com/podcast. Terms and conditions apply. Need a hiring hero? This is a job for Indeed sponsored jobs.

• 56:23David Pierce?

  All right, we're back. So, none of us is at IFA this year. John Porter and Gen2 were there. They did a lot of really great coverage for the site. There's a stream of all the stuff that they found. They went and just had adventures with vacuums and lights and headphones and speakers. And now they're sleeping. And now they're sleeping. It really is how it goes. You basically, you go, you touch gadgets for three days with no sleep or food, and then you drink heavily and go to sleep. And that's pretty much the run of one of those shows. So they are hopefully, at this moment, in the sleep phase. Not the drinking bits. Listen, it's a win-win. Yeah, it's either way. But let's, there was a bunch of things going on, but we, we've kind of figured out how to divide it into three categories of interesting stuff.

• 57:06David Pierce?

  And, Richard, you alluded to one of them earlier. So, take us through the, the like, charging world of IFA this year.

• 57:14Speaker 06

  Yeah, it's all kind of centered around the iPhone 15 launch because Apple is finally going to release a phone, we think, with a USB-C port, first of all. So Lightning and tons of docks, tons of chargers, tons of stands that people have, when they get a new phone, starting this fall, those won't apply anymore. They're going to need new chargers, they're going to need new things, they're going to need new cables. So of course, all the companies that make those are just ready with new products. And beyond that, there's also this new standard Qi 2 to replace the wireless Qi standard that, assuming Apple supports it, could allow outside makers' chargers to charge iPhones at up to 15 watts, you know, just by touching it.

• 57:53David Pierce?

  Which would be like twice what it has been before, right?

• 57:56Speaker 06

  Yeah, it was 7.5. If you weren't a MagSafe charger, it was half the rate. So, and you know, these things, they throttle kind of as it goes to the charging. So like, it's not just going to be twice as fast, but it'll be faster and you'll love it. Anchor and Belkin are two of the companies that have announced Qi 2 products. One of the things that I noticed about these announcements is that everyone who's announcing Qi 2 products does not have a date for when they'll be released. They don't have a price. They don't really have anything. It's coming later this year, probably maybe early next year for some things, but eventually. And I think we'll probably get a lot more clarity once the iPhone 15 is actually announced. But we've got stuff like battery packs. Anchor, they've got it all branded under their Maggo line. They've got new stands, they've got, you know, different chargers, different kind of desktop chargers, all kinds of things.

• 58:41Speaker 06

  And the same thing for Belkin. And I think that this new Qi 2 standard is going to be the kind of thing that you will actually replace several of the chargers that you have probably within your reach on your desk right now.

• 58:52David Pierce?

  I just realized as you were talking that this is kind of about to be the most exciting moment for phone accessories, like ever.

• 59:00Speaker 06

  That there has ever been.

• 59:01David Pierce?

  Yeah, for the first time, if I'm an accessory maker, I can make something that works with your phone, your laptop, your tablet, your other phone, your partner's phone. Like, you can build something that is going to work for everything and is going to last, because I think you can reliably assume we're going to be on USB-C at least a few years from now. And so I have a feeling we're about to see like a glut of stuff. And like, Lord knows, Anchor alone is going to make 700 different USB-C products between now and like, September 12th.

• 59:34Speaker 06

  Yeah, and of course, it's not all, and if it's USB C, it can work with whatever, but they they have like a little thing that kind of latches on to the bottom of your iPhone with USB C. It does, they can't show it connecting to an iPhone yet, but you know what it is. And that's just kind of where we are with those products. So there's just, there's going to be even more and even better, I think, kind of charging stuff. So if you're the kind of person who, when it's one of those Amazon deal days or something, you're like, okay, yeah, I'm gonna go get some chargers. It's time. It's going to be your time very soon.

• 1:00:02David Pierce?

  Kranz, this must make you so happy.

• 1:00:04Alex Cranz?

  I'm not happy at all because I just bought so much wireless charging stuff like two months ago. I feel so dumb. I'm just like, was like reading all of the news out of Eva being like, rookie, move, Kranz.

• 1:00:19Speaker 06

  It's every time when the prices are really good and you're like, okay, I'll get it. It's all on sale. I should, I should buy these.

• 1:00:25Alex Cranz?

  I got that wireless charger slash battery from Anchor. That thing is great.

• 1:00:29David Pierce?

  The little cube?

• 1:00:30Alex Cranz?

  Yeah, that like, oh, it's beautiful.

• 1:00:32David Pierce?

  I love that thing.

• 1:00:33Alex Cranz?

  I love it. And now I'm like, well, damn it, there's another one and I want that one more because it's got like a little screen on it.

• 1:00:38Speaker 06

  It has a screen on it now.

• 1:00:39Alex Cranz?

  Yeah, I'm like, so if anybody needs a generation one charger, I'm in the market to sell it at cost.

• 1:00:46David Pierce?

  I do wonder if there's gonna be like a black market for old, old chargers and docks going forward. Like all the people who just desperately hold on to their iPhone eight minis, like.

• 1:00:58Alex Cranz?

  I'm re-gifting it all to family. Christmas is gonna be really crummy for them and great for me.

• 1:01:04Speaker 06

  Before we're done with this, I want to make the case for slow wireless chargers. I have the the older Pixel Stand near my bed. Now, see, if you're one of those people who you want to go to sleep and stop using your phone. One way to do that, put the wireless charger out of your reach.

• 1:01:18Alex Cranz?

  Yes.

• 1:01:19Speaker 06

  You have to decide, am I going to put the phone on this stand and let it charge overnight so that it's not empty? Battery isn't empty when I wake up. Or am I going to use the phone and maybe fall asleep with it in my hand, wake up with a phone on zero and I don't have a fast charger to charge it up?

• 1:01:33Alex Cranz?

  That's good.

• 1:01:34Speaker 06

  That stress, it will improve your life.

• 1:01:36Alex Cranz?

  That's smart.

• 1:01:37Speaker 06

  Get yourself a slow charger.

• 1:01:38David Pierce?

  No, disagree. I really like, I think the single most like aspirational thing I have done over the years is try to be a person who charges my phone outside of my bedroom. So many times I have tried to be this person. I'm like, okay, I'm gonna have a stack of like, print books and magazines and that's what I'm gonna read before bed. I'm not gonna sit here and like scroll Reddit until I fall asleep. And after like three days, inevitably, I'm like, how did my charger get right back into my room and next to my bed and I'm scrolling Reddit again? Like, I don't remember ever putting it back in here and yet it has arrived. And I swear I've tried this 25 times in my life and I think it shows real personal growth that I have stopped trying. Like, I think it says, it says a lot about me as a person.

• 1:02:20Alex Cranz?

  Are you, I mean, you're not a very lazy person, so is just putting it on the other side of the, because putting it on the charger on the other side of the room, that's enough for me. I'm that lazy that like, once it's on there, I'm not getting out of bed again.

• 1:02:32David Pierce?

  For me, it's not getting, it's not even the laziness factor. It's like the, the actual feeling of getting out of bed is so awful.

• 1:02:38Alex Cranz?

  It's the words.

• 1:02:39David Pierce?

  It's the taking off the covers. Like, even if my charger was right there, but I had to take off the covers to get it, I wouldn't do it.

• 1:02:45Alex Cranz?

  Sometimes, there's one time where I did that, but like, I like army crawled across the floor with like the cover still on a single foot, being like,

• 1:02:53David Pierce?

  I'm not technically out of bed.

• 1:02:55Alex Cranz?

  Yeah, it worked. It was fine. It's fine.

• 1:02:57David Pierce?

  It's very good. Uh, but yeah, I suspect it's about to be a very, very, very exciting, like six months in the accessory world. And the other thing I will say is this is just a PSA to everyone now. Don't buy any accessories. Don't buy any accessories the day Apple launches things. Don't buy any accessories the day it ships, because what's gonna happen is between now and Christmas, there's going to be this unbelievable glut of cool new stuff that comes out. And it's gonna happen really fast, because all these companies are already making USB-C stuff. So they're not gonna have to get used to a completely new connector. Apple will have some weird tweak to it, because it always does. But there's going to be just a run of new things that all these companies are ready for. And so whatever you buy today or tomorrow, or on September 12th, or September 20, whatever,

• 1:03:41David Pierce?

  when the iPhone ships, there will be something in November that is better. And by Black Friday, it will cost $5. So Alex Cranz, stop buying accessories.

• 1:03:51Alex Cranz?

  And like, you were talking, I was like, actually, maybe it was good that I just bought all of this stuff. Because we're not going to be buying, I'm like, I can't. I just bought a new dining room table and four like wireless chargers. I'm broke for the next year. Like, it's great.

• 1:04:04David Pierce?

  There you go.

• 1:04:05Alex Cranz?

  There we go.

• 1:04:06David Pierce?

  All right, you go next, Cranz. What, what did you look up for Efa?

• 1:04:09Alex Cranz?

  So there was a lot of smart home stuff, ton of stuff. That's why my Jen was there and she was doing incredible work. A lot of stuff coming out of, from Philips Hue, who historically just does lights. And if you, like me, are tired of spending so much money on Hue lights, there's a lot of competitors in this space now. There's a ton of other really good lights. I've got some like little candelabra lights. They're beautiful. They do like the pride flag. It doesn't actually look like the pride flag, but in July or in June, I was like, yeah, cool.

• 1:04:38David Pierce?

  Is Hue still the best one though? I, I confess, I'm slightly behind the times on my own personal smart home gear, but my read was always Hue is the best. It's also twice the price of everything else.

• 1:04:48Alex Cranz?

  Yeah, Hue, yeah, like, like it's, it's like the Apple deal for a long time where you're like, well, sure, I'm paying twice the price, but I can smugly say it works. Can you say that, Richard?

• 1:04:58David Pierce?

  Fair.

• 1:04:59Alex Cranz?

  In your Windows machine, but.

• 1:05:02David Pierce?

  That hurt.

• 1:05:05Alex Cranz?

  Can I say that about my Mac lately? No. But, but yeah, so it typically just works, but it costs a ton more. But there's a, there's so much stuff out now in the space that really does also just work. Like I was using it, adding stuff both to Home Assistant and to, to HomeKit. Zero issue, like totally flawless. Even the stuff that some people complain about, like NanoLeaf, can sometimes be a little buggy. Works. And so Hue has a whole bunch of stuff. They've got track lighting now, which is big. That's exciting because oftentimes track lighting, you can't replace, like there's no little bulbs to go in there and replace.

• 1:05:46Alex Cranz?

  That Hue probably would make if they could. So you have to get the whole thing. So that's cool. And they, they got into, to security cameras, which is a big deal for them. They've, they've just been a company that does lights and now they're doing security cameras, predictably expensive security cameras.

• 1:06:03David Pierce?

  Yeah, it's very telling to me that that's where they went, actually, that like, I think it's it's pretty obvious that if you're a company that wants to do smart home stuff, lights is the place to start, right? It is kind of the, it's like the gateway drug to the smart home for basically everybody. And it's very interesting to me that after all this time, the the Hugh team looked around and was like, okay, what's the next thing we want to do? And decided it was security cameras, not like other sensors or weird things for your garage door, or things for your car. It's just, they're just like, security cameras.

• 1:06:33Alex Cranz?

  Yeah. And and these are very expensive. It's got end to end encryption. It currently does not work out of the box, or won't work out of the box with Alexa and Google Assistant's home security camera integrations. So you won't be able to just like play it on your little Google speaker anywhere. That kind of sucks. It won't work with HomeKit until Matter starts supporting video for security cameras, because that's the only way it's going to work with HomeKit. It won't work with like HomeKit's secure video platform, which isn't actually very good to begin with. So that's not the worst one. Like that one, you're like, oh, that's kind of sucks. But also, I'm fine with that. Or at least I am.

• 1:07:15Alex Cranz?

  But it will work with Matter. And the most exciting part of all the Philips Hue news is it finally is going to start supporting Matter. It's pushing out an update next month. I am unreasonably excited. I've been spending this whole week being like, I cannot DM Jen because she's very busy working. And all I want to do is be like, Jen, Jen, Jen, Jen, Jen, this is such a good moment. So I'm like, being very patient and waiting until she comes back and gets over her hangover and and is having a good time. And then I'm gonna just assail her with it. But that's exciting. Like, it's been ages since they promised Matter. And the stuff I use that where Matter works is wonderful. I'm in the future. I'm

• 1:07:58Alex Cranz?

  having the best day of my life. I've set up my entire system. Oh, it doesn't work with Matter? I hate everything and everyone. And I want it all to die, especially my robot vacuum cleaner.

• 1:08:08David Pierce?

  Which there were also a bunch of Adifa.

• 1:08:09Alex Cranz?

  There was.

• 1:08:10David Pierce?

  I just love that robot vacuums are becoming like an outrageously competitive space. There are so many good robot vacuums out there now. I love it.

• 1:08:19Alex Cranz?

  This was the first one I'd ever, like, I tried one 10 years ago and it was garbage. And I was like, I'm okay. I can just walk around with a vacuum cleaner like a normal person. And back this summer, somebody was like, oh, go get a robot vacuum cleaner. They're really good now. And this was a person that I trust. And so I was like, you generally aren't stupid. And I went and I got one on sale and I was like, oh, it's really good now. It like, my house is just clean. That's, and with a dog, that's not common. So.

• 1:08:48David Pierce?

  They're good now. And now there's a, the robot lawnmower industry is booming. I think Jen and John saw one of those.

• 1:08:56Alex Cranz?

  It's starting to boom. Yeah, there was, she, she was, she saw a robot lawnmower. The problem with robot lawnmowers is they generally have really crappy range. And American lawns tend to be pretty big. Like they, there's a lot of space. There's a lot of stuff going on in them. And these weren't doing it very well. They're really meant for those little tiny, like postage stamp sized lawns in Europe. And so this can do like half an acre, which I would have loved at the age of 13, when I had to hop on the riding lawnmower and like mow the front and the backyard and then the garden. It was the worst time of my life. My family still talks about how much I complained about it. This would have been amazing. I would have like been campaigning for it immediately.

• 1:09:38Alex Cranz?

  So I'm so excited. All you kids out there listening, I know there's a lot of 13 year olds that listen to the Vergecast. And I know you're very excited about this. Start campaigning now. This is a great Christmas gift for you. Probably not. Your parents will not buy it because it's like $2,000, but aspirational, aspirational.

• 1:09:54David Pierce?

  Yeah, everybody talks about how like, kids are not going to grow up and learn how to drive. And they're going to miss like a key part of life. And I just feel like if, if your parents never force you to mow the lawn, like you've, you've missed something.

• 1:10:06Alex Cranz?

  Yeah, you really have.

• 1:10:07David Pierce?

  It's like 111 degrees and you have a push mower that barely works. And they're like, shut up, we're going to pay you $1. Go mow for five hours, David. And then rake all the leaves. It's fine. My child is fine.

• 1:10:20Alex Cranz?

  I hated the leaves. It's the worst.

• 1:10:22David Pierce?

  Ah, the leaves.

• 1:10:23Speaker 06

  Spending, spending 45 minutes trying to get that thing to start is character building.

• 1:10:27David Pierce?

  That's exactly right.

• 1:10:28Alex Cranz?

  You feel like you're a mechanic afterwards. Like when somebody's car breaks down, you're like, hold up. I've jump started a lawnmower. I think I can help. You can't. It doesn't work that way.

• 1:10:38David Pierce?

  Is there a thing I can pull on really hard and hope that starts it? All right. The last thing from Eva, which I should just run through real fast was there were a few headphone and speaker announcements, but a couple were actually very cool. So I just want to basically call out two. One is new Jabra headphones. They're called the Elite 10s and the Elite 8s. They're basically new wireless earbuds. I think Jabra in general does not get the shine it deserves in the headphone space. Everybody talks about AirPods and Pixelbuds and Galaxybuds and kind of all the stuff that's like bundled with devices. Jabra does a really good job of making just like very good headphones that work with everything. It supports like all of the open standards it can. It has really good noise cancellation. The mics tend to be pretty good.

• 1:11:22David Pierce?

  The battery life is pretty good.

• 1:11:24Alex Cranz?

  The audio is good.

• 1:11:25David Pierce?

  Yeah, like they're very good headphones.

• 1:11:27Alex Cranz?

  But they're big. They sit like if you have tiny ear canals, that's, that's why I don't use them is my ear canals are too small.

• 1:11:32David Pierce?

  So that's actually one of the things that I think is exciting about these new ones. The Elite 10s, which are the higher end one, I think they're 250 bucks. They have a like semi-open design, which in theory should help with that feeling of being sort of smushed in your ear. Personally, I ended up using very few of those kind of closed ear headphones because I get the same thing, like my ear canals start to hurt after a while if I listen to those. Like I got the Sony Linkbuds and they caught, they like cause pain or they fall out.

• 1:12:03Alex Cranz?

  I love that pain that like, you're like, oh, it fits so good. Agony, agony, agony. But this Taylor sounds lovely.

• 1:12:11David Pierce?

  Oh, it sounds amazing. Yeah, but I like after 30 minutes, I'm like, oh, I'm going to lose both of my ears. Like this is cool.

• 1:12:16Alex Cranz?

  And they feel like they're bleeding.

• 1:12:18David Pierce?

  Yeah, but so the Elite 10s seem cool, sound great. They have six mics, I think. The the audio quality should be good. They're supposedly one of the best they've that Jabra's ever made. And then there's the Elite 8. I think it's technically called the Elite 8 Active that are IP68 rated, which is like more or less everything you would need as a person.

• 1:12:37Alex Cranz?

  Yeah, you can get disgusting.

• 1:12:39David Pierce?

  Yeah, exactly. It's like you can throw it in the wash and they'll come out fine. And they're just super, super rugged. And personally, like, I lost a pair of AirPods because I got caught in a rainstorm. I lost another pair of AirPods because I dropped one of them in a puddle and then put it back in the charger and it ruined everything. Which, if you're wondering, yes, it was stupid, but this is the life I lead.

• 1:13:00Alex Cranz?

  You had to charge it.

• 1:13:01David Pierce?

  Yeah. And so just, I like blew on it a bunch of times and then put it back in the case. And then about 45 minutes later, it was like, that was the dumbest thing I could have possibly done. But now here we are. But so the idea of like a super ruggedized pair of pretty good headphones, I actually sound very exciting. But they both do wireless charging, they both do multipoint Bluetooth, they both do the mono modes, you can just wear one earbud at a time. They just like have all the features. And I think like in general, if you're shopping for wireless headphones, most people don't think of Jabra. And you should. But the other thing, which I think is much more exciting, is this new JBL. I think it's called the Authentix Speaker.

• 1:13:37Alex Cranz?

  Ooh, the, they look nice.

• 1:13:39David Pierce?

  They do, right? The 200, the 300, and the 400. They're all stupid expensive. They're like anywhere from $330 to $700 for a Bluetooth speaker, which is preposterous.

• 1:13:49Alex Cranz?

  Can't put a price on fashion.

• 1:13:50David Pierce?

  But not only are they great looking, they are. They have this like cool sort of fabricy retro thing going on. But they also have Alexa and Google Assistant in one device and it can hear both wake words at the same time. You don't have to do the Sonos thing where in setup you pick which one you want to use. You can use both. And you can tell it with one to start the music and with the other to stop the music. And they found some ways in which that gets weird. Like if you start a timer with Alexa and then you try to use Google to stop the timer, that doesn't quite work. But.

• 1:14:18Alex Cranz?

  It worked if the timer was going off. But if you like started a timer and then you're like, oh no, I didn't want to do that timer. And you try to tell it to stop. Yeah, John, like, I guess he got to play with one. And apparently just had a whole list of ways he was gonna screw with this thing.

• 1:14:33David Pierce?

  I love it.

• 1:14:33Alex Cranz?

  And just went through his whole list. He chronicled it all in his piece. And I was just like, yeah. Just like chanting as I read it. It was great.

• 1:14:42David Pierce?

  Yeah, his piece is really great. And he also, he asked Google, like, should I take this as the beginning of a trend? Is this gonna actually be the sort of interoperable voice assistant world we've been wanting to live in? And the Google representative was sort of sketchy about it. And so who knows?

• 1:14:59Alex Cranz?

  And then ran away fleeing?

• 1:15:00David Pierce?

  Yeah, I mean, basically. But the, at least this proves that like, this is a thing that can be done. And here's hoping that it's not just on this one set of expensive JBL speakers.

• 1:15:11Alex Cranz?

  Do you think Sonos is gonna do it at some point? Like a good version?

• 1:15:15David Pierce?

  I think at this point, Sonos and Google are at such odds that I would be surprised if Google was interested in playing along with Sonos.

• 1:15:22Alex Cranz?

  They would rather just get rid of it entirely if it would piss off.

• 1:15:26David Pierce?

  But like, could the next UE boom that I buy, because I'm inevitably gonna buy 500 more of those in my life? Could that have both? That would be awesome. Like, the speaker world is big and wide. And imagine if you could have them with the Dolby stuff that worked all over your house? And you could talk to each individual one with whatever voice assistant you wanted. Like, how is that not the world we live in? This is the world we should live in.

• 1:15:50Alex Cranz?

  That's the future. That's what I want. That's the interoperable future I want.

• 1:15:54David Pierce?

  Yeah, I just want to yell whatever I want at my speakers and they have to listen.

• 1:15:57Speaker 06

  I do not want to do that. I don't want to talk to my speakers ever about anything. But I do love these. They look incredible. Like, if you remember how speakers looked, those old 70s and 80s speakers, you do have to look at these. Finally, someone's bringing that back. I don't know why they didn't before, but they are now, and I like it.

• 1:16:14Alex Cranz?

  Yeah, it's based on the L100s, right? From the 70s.

• 1:16:17David Pierce?

  Yeah, after like, two decades of trying to make speakers look like spaceships, now we're back to making them look like speakers. And it makes me very happy. Like, these, yeah, these look great. The one has a handle on it, which is basically just to remind you, like, yes, you can pick this thing up. It's allowed. They have, they have actual knobs for all of the different levels. It's just wonderful. Like, what a world.

• 1:16:38Speaker 06

  Yeah, I'm not, I'm not saying that you should do cocaine off of these speakers, but like, if you wanted to.

• 1:16:42Alex Cranz?

  If you wanted to, yeah, they've got some good, there's some good flat spaces there for a nice, a nice line. We don't endorse cocaine on the Vergecast.

• 1:16:51David Pierce?

  All right, well, now that we've gone well and fully off the rails, it is time to end the Vergecast. Just in case this is the last episode you ever listen to, this is what I want to leave you with.

• 1:17:02Alex Cranz?

  It's snowing somewhere.

• 1:17:06David Pierce?

  All right. A lot of good stuff on the site this week. We had the most recent piece in our big series investigating the effect of Google in the world. Ryan Broderick wrote a really great piece called "The End of the Googleverse." Really interesting. It's full of like, old internet heads reminiscing on like, the weird things people used to do with Google in the early 2000s. It's really fun. Our video team and our producer Andrew Moreno made an amazing video with one of those heads that does binaural audio and noise-canceling headphones to like, really test how good noise-canceling is. It's a wild video with like, lots of graphs that I didn't understand and tons of interesting people and Andrew sweating to death on a summer in New York City. It's a really great

• 1:17:47David Pierce?

  video. Andrew also did another piece on the button of the month about a USB button that helped people win Jeopardy. It's delightful and I want one just to like mute and unmute my microphone now. I have no use for it, but I want it. I want one real bad. The latest Land of the Giants episode is out. It's about Tesla in China. It's very good. That whole season has been really great. Like, Land of the Giants is always really great, but I actually think this might be my favorite season we've ever done. It's really good. Everybody should go listen to it. We are going to be off next Wednesday because it's Labor Day, but then we're going to be back next Friday. We're going to have more Apple to talk about. Like I said, there is just a massive tidal wave of gadgets and tech news coming in the next three months. So, we're going to be doing a ton. It's going to be a lot of fun. We'll see you then. Rock and roll.

• 1:18:37Speaker 07

  And that's a wrap for Vergecast this week. We'd love to hear from you. Shoot us an email at [email protected]. The Vergecast is a production of The Verge and the Vox Media Podcast Network. The show is produced by me, Liam James, and our senior audio director, Andrew Moreno. Our editorial director is Brooke Minterz. That's it. We'll see you next week.

• 1:19:09Speaker 08

  New and exclusive holiday decor just launched online at The Home Depot. Check out the viral Grand Duchess collection with smart holiday lights you can control from your phone. Easily customize the twinkle across trees, wreaths, and garlands to match your holiday vibe. Create stunning light effects, then switch it up with the tap of your fingers. Even the man in red will be impressed. Shop the holiday decor you want, online only, at homedepot.com.

• 1:19:40Speaker 09

  Everyone's got a hard question about AI. Your job, your kids, where it's going. Anthropic was built to surface those questions and share what it finds along the way, because there's hope in hard questions. Ask yours at claud.ai/spotify and keep thinking. That's claud.ai/spotify.